New High-Tech EU Entry/Exit System Starts in October

Somehow this hasn't been on our radar.

The European Union has set October 12, 2025 as the date it starts to implement its new biometric and electronic entry system for visitors. You can read the details on the official EU travel website. 

Digital photos and fingerprints will replace the stamping of passports by border officials. We read in this article that American and Canadian visitors arriving after October 12 in any of the 29 countries in the Schengen Area can expect delays as they go through a digital registration process where fingerprints will be taken and a digital photo captured.

With exquisite timing, the arrival date of our next trip to Europe is October 14, two days later. We will see what happens then. Of course, as with the US "Real ID" and the EU ETA initiatives, there may be delays in implementing it.

Once everything is in place, supposedly by April 2026, the process of entering and leaving EU countries should be as simple as it ordinarily is for us to enter Canada and the U.S.

The new system will hopefully prevent the type of situation in which we found ourselves when leaving Czechia (Czech Republic) this past March. You can read about it in detail in this post, but essentially the Czech border inspectors couldn't find an exit stamp for our exit from the EU, Portugal, in November. 

We showed them what we had, including our Tripit entry and photos of us aboard the transatlantic cruise that departed from Lisbon. We had ironically entered and exited Italy in January without the inspectors noticing this lapse. Fortunately the Czech inspectors finally realized we were fairly low-risk tourists, got bored with us (what's more boring than senior citizens showing you pictures of their cruise?) and let us proceed.

 Of course, we all know that things can go awry even in a high-tech environment, so we'll reserve judgment until the EU completes this project. 

We'll hope rather than expect our arrival in Frankfurt October 14 will be quick and smooth.